Florida’s Freaky Fridays : Tinker Bell and the Infamous Phone Number

On June 15, 2012 by Kevin Forde

Smart phones, not always a bright idea

In previous weeks we’ve brought you the tale of the homeless man who robbed a shop and then proceeded to give all his money away to much more deserving, though presumably not homeless, folks on a nearby bus. We’ve also revealed how Floridian Jacquelyn V. Myers took sick leave from work and then secretly ran 80 long distance events and also the congressional candidate who changed his name to a web address.

So, what weird, wonderful and weirdly wonderful tales does Florida have in store for us this week?

Man inherits notorious phone number

Some people don’t catch up with technology all that quickly. Not everyone feels the need to queue all night for the new shiny piece of utterly needless – yet still life changing – piece of software from Apple that can be bought in day light hours for half the price a few weeks later. Some people are just a bit cooler than that. Who needs Blu-Ray when VCR works perfectly fine and who needs Skype when there’s nothing wrong with mobiles. Junior Alexander Guy took his time to even go that far. In fact, it was just last month (May 2012) that the 49 year-old Floridian decided to get himself a mobile. Then he started getting some abusive calls. Had he annoyed some people without realised it? Had the Luddite Association gotten wind of his new extravagant communication device or had he inherited the phone number of one George Zimmerman?

It was the latter. And in case you don’t know, George Zimmerman is the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in February this year. A case which has caused a helluva storm in the US.

The Orlando wastewater plant worker’s first mobile number – 407-435-2400 – just happened to bethe same one Zimmerman spelled out to a police dispatcher in a recorded call the night of the shooting.It has since been widely circulated by all kinds of news organizations and is also available on the Internet.

Guy reckoned he received around 70 threatening phone calls at all hours of the night, from lovely people saying things like “you murderer” and also “you deserve to die” the phone is now in the hands of Orlando lawyer George Trimble. The phone number follows other numbers Diego Maradona’s number 10 for Napoli and Dan Marino’s number 13 for the Miami Dolphins and has been retired.

No room for Tinker Bell in the Animal Kingdom

Sometimes the only way to make something truly memorable is to dress up like a tiny fairy from Peter Pan. That’s what April Spielman decided on taking her beau on his first trip to Walt Disney World. If mistaking the theme park for a Halloween party was an odd decision (he was dressed as the forever youthful Peter Pan) then they were both in for a further surprise when they got to Disney’s Animal Kingdom.; security wouldn’t let them through the gates. Apparently she just looked too much like a two-inch tall flying fairy.

Of course, what Spielman had failed to take into account was the Disney dress code, which can be found on their website and states that “adult costumes or clothing that can be viewed as representative of an actual Disney character” are prohibited. So, Disney fans you can dream all you want about being Jasmin, Pocohauntas or, er, Quasimodo but you better not dress up as them.

Social networking ruins social event

Sharing stuff online is wonderful. What did we do before Facebook and Twitter came along when we wanted to severely over react to a minor issue like “It’s raining agin. FML” or alternatively, tell the world that your girlfriend has cheated on you, with your best friend? Why we’d have had to keep that information to everyone within earshot. Not anymore. If the internet is good for anything, and Jebus knows it isn’t, then it’s providing the world with useless information, like videos of cats making lasagna or blogs on weird events from a particular state in the US.

Sometimes though, the internet isn’t all that helpful, as a group of Floridians at Fort de Soto Park campsite found out recently. They decided to have themselves a party, which included actual “mountain of booze” at least according to officials at Pineallas County Park – which begs the question why weren’t they discovered sooner and how did they afford multiple mountains of alcohol?

Anyway before long the young folks whipped out their smartphones and beamed their shenanigans to the world. Then Google inadvertently stepped in. A Google alert notified a camp volunteer due to the title Camping at Fort De Soto. Instead of climbing, drinking or simply admiring their intoxicating mountain, they got citations and were forced to leave the premises.

At which point they almost certainly went home and social networked the hell out of their adventures.